Sermoneta has 9,129 inhabitants between the Agro Pontino and the Lepini mountains. On the ridge of Monte Carbolino, above the abbey of Valvisciolo, there survive walls in polygonal masonry and the necropolis of Caracupa, with about a hundred Iron Age burials: some recognise in it, very cautiously, the Volscian city of Sulmo that Virgil names in the Aeneid. When the marshes spread and the Saracens arrived, the inhabitants moved higher up, where the name Sermoneta is already attested in the eleventh century.
The castrum passed from the Annibaldi to the Caetani, who in 1297 bought it with the support of pope Boniface VIII and made it the centre of their domains, on the piedmont road that had replaced the Appia. Alexander VI confiscated it from them and in 1500 sold the lordship to his daughter Lucrezia Borgia: under her, the following year, a new communal statute was issued, gathered in the illuminated codex of the Statuta populi Sermonetani and in force until the Caetani returned in 1503. In the abbey of Valvisciolo the Sator square is laid out in five concentric rings.
No events match these filters.
📅 Every year, on 19 March; in January the Polenta Festival, a local dish
Sermoneta celebrates Saint Joseph on 19 March, in the church dedicated to him. The second Sunday of January holds the Polenta Festival, a local dish; followed by the Festa dei fauni on 18 March, the Sermoneta in Folklore International Festival in August and the age-old Fiera di San Michele in September.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Sermoneta, but an easy day trip away.
